This invention relates to a medical precision measuring apparatus for analyzing a collected blood specimen biochemically or immunologically, and particularly relates to an apparatus for analyzing substances present in a blood specimen by optically measuring the specific color produced by the reaction of blood and a reagent or a diluent.
As a prior art of this type, the apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent-Application Laid Open No. 56-168553 (Appln. No. 55-73210) is well known.
However, in prior apparatuses of this type there are some defects as follow.
First, due to the fact that reaction tubes which are held in a reaction portion are suspended in one cylindrical reaction table, the number of reaction tubes is determined according to the diameter of the table used. Therefore, in order to improve the through-put capacity of an analysis apparatus, it is necessary to enlarge the diameter of the table to increase the number of the reaction tubes. However, if the table is enlarged, the apparatus itself becomes overly large-sized which necessitates a large space for establishment thereof. In addition, the use and manufacture of drive and stop controls of the reaction table become difficult.
Second, since such a series of operations as charging of and measuring a specimen and the cleaning of a reaction tube are conducted in one revolution of the reaction table, a rotary speed of the reaction table is relatively reduced for ensuring each of those operations and it takes a long time to treat one specimen.
Third, this speed limitation brings to prior systems another defect, i.e., making the urgent measuring of specimen in such a case as an emergency operation. Such difficult a defect does not satisfy the recent requirement for accelerating the optical measuring using 2 reagents at a high speed and with high precision.